TIP-045, this proposal, supersedes and replaces TIP-035.
TL; DR: Bootstrap Node Requirements
tBTCv2 will launch with three bootstrap node providers: Boar, P2P, and Staked. Each provider will receive a grant of $10,000/month in T. The updated Bootstrap Node Proposal shortens the term commitment to one (1) year and adds the requirement of running an Electrum Server.
Background:
After carefully considering the concerns, suggestions and comments from the community in response to the first version of this proposal, this update has been drafted to reduce the expense to the DAO while still ensuring a robust and timely launch of tBTCv2.
Bootstrap nodes are critical building blocks of infrastructure for the Threshold Network’s tBTC application and are very different from regular nodes. Their operator addresses are hard-coded in off-chain client code. Bootstrap nodes do not participate in activities that expose them to slashing risk, thus they do not earn inflation rewards. Their stake sizes are of no importance and can be the minimum stake.
Main Revision Points:
- The runtime of this proposal has been reduced from three years to one year
- The number of operators contracted under this proposal has been reduced from 4 to 3
- Running an Electrum server as a requirement has been added
- The monthly grant in liquid T has been reduced to $10,000
- Guaranteed availability has been changed from 99.9% to 96 to 98%
Detailed Requirements Per Operator
Two (2) instances of the tBTCv2 client in independent regions for redundancy, to be deployed on high-availability equipment, whether this is a VPS or bare metal is left up to the provider.
Bootstrap node operators agree and guarantee availability of at least 96% to 98%. The rationale in reducing the uptime guarantee from 99.99% is that it is extremely unlikely that all bootstrap node providers will experience downtime at the same time. This reduction in guaranteed availability achieved a significant cost minimization for the DAO.
Electrum Server Requirement:
This requirement was added to further support the tBTCv2 launch. Operators agree to run one instance of an Electrum server, software version and other requirements shall be furnished prior to launch, however, as a reference, tBTCv2 has been tested against three of the most popular types of servers:
- ElectrumX (>= 1.16.0) (GitHub - spesmilo/electrumx: Alternative implementation of spesmilo/electrum-server)
- Esplora/Electrs (>= v0.4.1) (GitHub - Blockstream/electrs: An efficient re-implementation of Electrum Server in Rust)
- Fulcrum (>= 1.8.2) (GitHub - cculianu/Fulcrum: A fast & nimble SPV Server for BCH, BTC, and LTC)
A Bitcoin node is required for electrum to function properly. Thus, bootstrap providers will need to maintain a Bitcoin node as well.
Providers:
P2P - https://p2p.org/ - P2P Validator provides high uptime, secure staking with advanced monitoring & support. P2P was established in early 2018 and proved the best quality of staking services as one of the top operators in Threshold, Solana, Polkadot/Kusama, Tezos, Graph, Moonbeam, Regen, Chainlink, and Connext Networks. Currently, P2P secures more than 1.5 billion USD value across 30+ networks, provides highly-available RPC services, and contributes to web3 as a core developer for Lido on Solana and Neutron - Cosmos Hub secured smart-contract chain.
Staked - https://staked.us/ - Staked operates the most secure, performant, and cost-effective block production nodes for decentralized PoS protocols on behalf of institutional investors. Their multi-tier signing and listening node architecture delivers stakeholders the ideal combination of security, scalability and decentralization.
Boar - https://boar.network/ for transparency, please review the following post: TIP-035 T grants for tBTC v2 bootstrap node providers
Proposal:
If approved, each provider will receive a grant of $10,000/month in liquid T for running a tBTC v2 bootstrap node in accordance with the requirements discussed herein.